Knowing and Understanding Target Customers
For any business, it is important to have a well-defined target market.
It also helps to minimize risk and allows a business to focus on brand management efforts in the most cost-effective manner.
For the target market , something offbeat can be done in the hopes of drumming up attention and engagement. A target market does not mean that some people are excluded if they do not fit a certain criteria.
On the other hand, target marketing allows the brand message to focus on a particular market that is more likely to buy from a business than other markets.
For example, a manufacturer of children’s toys may have boys of the age group 9–11 as the target market. Given below are some ways to understand target customers.
Twitter’s Search Function
Twitter’s advanced search is a tool that can be a social media search engine for a brand.
It is extremely effective in finding specific businesses, tweets and personal profiles . Its options help to gain access to free, high-quality leads.
If a keyword is used in a search, then the advanced search will produce hits containing both the word and the people using it as a hashtag.
Many twitter users might be tweeting about a service or a product, but they might not be tagging the business in their tweets by using the @ symbol. Even if they do, with millions of tweets being sent every day, they might be getting lost. Advanced search makes it easy to detect those tweets.
Monitoring Conversation in Real Time
To monitor conversation in real time, a column can be added to TweetDeck, Hootsuite or some other social media management system.
This would help to get results for keywords.
There are also platforms like Sprout Social, Topsy, and Trackur that are detailed and that also serve as advanced tools. The tools can also be custom built. Research on which platforms will be effective in reaching the target market for a business will be worthwhile.
For example, if the business is a vacation destination for weddings and research shows that phrases and keywords such as ‘ wedding locations’ and destination wedding ’ appear more frequently on Pinterest than on other social media platforms, it might be advantageous to consider using that platform.
Beautiful and evocative imagery works well on Pinterest.
If the demographics show that a significant number of women of age group 20 to 40 are using Pinterest, then that’s the target market.
Dig Deeper into Current Customer Base
To identify the right target market it is important to learn more about existing customers, their choices and preferences.
It is also important to be aware of the trends that social media platforms have taken in recent years.
For example, initially Facebook was used by a ‘younger’ audience.
Now, a lot of youngsters make excuses not to befriend their parents and even their grandparents , who have all taken to using Facebook , making it almost as popular as Google.
